The 2024 Presidential election stood out for the unusual uniformity of Donald Trump’s inroads into the American electorate compared to four years earlier. If the 2016 cycle will be remembered for Republicans’ historical showing with blue-collar voters and the 2020 election was decided by a suburban backlash against incumbent President Trump, in 2024 the father of the MAGA movement was able to gain ground across almost all demographics, resulting in a nationwide 6% rightward swing relative to 2020 – the biggest national shift since 2008 – and a popular vote victory that the GOP had not achieved for 20 years.
In the seven battleground states, though, Trump only needed a minor movement in his favor in order to flip the swing states that voted for Joe Biden by a handful of votes – Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada – and to keep in his tally the ever-purple North Carolina, which Trump marginally carried in 2020. In fact, Trump’s gains were even bigger than needed in many instances, as he improved his previous numbers in every geopolitical region:
- Rural areas – Home to White, in some cases blue-collar – particularly in the Rust Belt – voters, with low levels of education attainment and income. This socially conservative group which once was the backbone of the Democratic Party has been shifting hard to the right since Trump came to the fore, attracted by his economic populism and attitudes towards social matters like immigration. In 2024, Trump kept making inroads into rural voters, suggesting a “saturation point” of Republican gains with this group has not been reached yet.
- Suburban areas – Home to high-income voters with high levels of educational attainment, the suburbs represented fertile ground for traditional Republicans like Mitt Romney, but have been shifting to the left in recent years amid Trump’s populism and following Democrats’ inroads among richer voters. Despite that, in 2024 Trump was able to play up voters’ economic concerns, distancing himself from some controversial social positions – for example on the issue of abortion, which hurt the GOP in 2022 – and painting Harris as out of touch and excessively progressive, therefore generally gaining some ground even in many suburban areas. Reflecting his gains among minority voters, the President did particularly well in suburban regions with significant shares of Hispanic population, like in the Philadelphia and Allentown, PA outskirts, while struggling more in predominantly White areas such as the Milwaukee or Atlanta outskirts. Trump also did better in suburbs that host bigger numbers of blue-collar workers – as epitomized by Macomb County, Michigan, which swung 5% to the right – compared to higher-income, white collar areas.
- Urban areas – Trump’s focus on the cost of living and inflation and its efforts to reach unconventional voters helped the GOP gain significant ground among urban minorities, especially Hispanic voters, particularly socially conservative men attuned to the President’s “manosphere” messaging. Considering that turnout was generally lower in urban, populous areas, even minor inroads into minorities netted Trump a significant gain in terms of raw votes.
Let’s break down the geography of Trump gains in five of the seven battleground states – the geographical development of Western swing states, Arizona and Nevada, results in a majority of the population being clustered in urban areas, like Phoenix or Las Vegas.
Michigan
In the Wolverine State, Trump’s performance in urban areas had an outsized – and unpredicted – effect on the final results, which explains why major pundits actually ranked Michigan to the left of every other swing state before the election. A significant presence of Arab population in Dearborn, Detroit, unhappy with the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza situation, resulted first in the Uncommitted movement receiving 100,000 votes in the Democratic Primary in February 2024, then in Wayne County – home to Detroit – shifting 9% in Trump’s favor in November, reflect a deep dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party in urban Michigan. Harris’s margins in Detroit shrunk by 84,000 votes compared to 2020, critically a bigger number compared to the 80,000-vote margin by which Trump carried the state in 2024. Michigan’s urban swing also made up 35% of the state’s 2020->2024 shift, the highest share of all the five battlegrounds we analyzed.
The President also gained ground in suburban areas and mid-to-small size cities, from the Detroit outskirts to Lansing and Grand Rapids thanks to his appeal to blue collars voters as well as middle class voters economic concerns, while his inroads in rural areas were reduced and made up only slightly more than 20% of the states’ swing.
Pennsylvania
Trump’s inroads into Hispanic voters were evident in Philadelphia, were he made up 47,000 votes compared to 2020, but the President also gained significant ground in suburban areas in the east of the Commonwealth. From the deep blue Delaware County to Bucks County, which went Republican for the first time since 1988, all the way to the Northeast in more blue-collar areas, Trump made important gains across the board, particularly in areas with high share of Hispanic population – Leigh, Berks County – and the industrial Northeast around Scranton. Trump also increased his margin in rural areas by 50K votes, even though his gains in exurban Pennsylvania were not decisive for his win. If, hypothetically, rural regions had voted just as they did in 2020, Trump would have still won the Keystone State by around 70K votes.
Wisconsin
Unlike in the other Midwestern battlegrounds, rural communities were critical in deciding the election in Wisconsin, where Trump actually lost ground in big cities. In Milwaukee, he narrowed the gap to the Democratic candidate by only 5,000 votes compared to 2020 as the city’s main minority block, black voters, stuck to Harris way more than Hispanics did, even due the community’s segregation, which results in highly compact election outcomes. On the other hand, the President lost 7,000 ballots in Madison, home to the University of Wisconsin, as he struggled with highly-educated, White urban constituencies. His suburban performance was also lackluster: he did lose 2.5K votes in the white, ruby-red, uber-rich WOW counties around Milwaukee, while marginally improving in other suburban areas and small cities around the state that feature lower levels of income and educational attainment as well as a higher share of blue-collar voters. All the difference was made in rural counties, where the President critically gained 40,000 votes. In particular, the strongest swings were registered in the Driftless Area: an erstwhile reliably Democratic, union-based blue-collar area that has been trending hard to the right since 2016.
Georgia
A similar pattern emerges in the state of Georgia, which Trump carried by 125,000 ballots four years after it voted for Joe Biden by only 10,000 votes. Trump gained as many as 20,000 votes in downtown Atlanta, while its Republican yet fast-growing and diversifying, highly-educated suburbs kept trending hard to the left. Still, higher turnout in Georgia suburbs reduced Trump’s losses to “just” 6,5000 ballots, which was more than offset by Kamala Harris’ inability to keep up with Biden’s numbers in rural Georgia. Trump’s MAGA campaign appealed to exurban, low-income Whites – a constituency that used to vote Democratic before the Reagan Era – but was also effective among socially conservative minorities in the Black Belt. Rural Blacks’ participation dropped compared to 2020, helping Trump increase his raw vote margin outside of of urban centers.
North Carolina
A remarkably similar dynamic is visible in North Carolina, which Trump carried by little less than 200K voters. Almost 80% of the state’s shift from 2020 came in rural regions, stemming both from White and Black areas, with he latter casting fewer votes in 2024 compared to four years earlier. Urban areas are slightly more educated and less diverse compared to other southern states, resulting in a slightly lower rightward swing; conversely, suburban voters in the Tar Heel State tend to be less educated and to have a lower income which, coupled with a less steep growth, resulted in Trump marginally gaining votes in North Carolina suburbs.
Conclusion
Overall, Trump gains across the country were quite uniform across socio-demographic groups, which was the natural effect of the country shifting as much as 6% in the GOP’s favor. Still, looking ahead to the next elections, it’s possible that each party will bank on a given demographic in order to win elections. Will Democrats target White suburban and let Republicans gain ground with rural voters and urban minorities? Or will they try to win back blue-collars and socially conservative voters giving the GOP some leeway to recover their historically suburban electorate? Only time, and partisan primaries, will tell.
